


The Things That Are Deadly

by DarkIsRising



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:49:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29500893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkIsRising/pseuds/DarkIsRising
Summary: The city is bleeding. Who could possibly notice their victims among all the dead?or, the one where Obi-Wan is a vampire and Qui-Gon is... well, you'll see.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 52
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Today, I'm thinkin' about the things that are deadly_  
>  _The way I'm drinkin' you down_  
>  _Like I wanna drown, like I wanna end me_ ~Billie Eilish

“Seems awfully late for a kid like you to be out and about.”

“I’m older than I look,” Obi-Wan can hear his former protégé say, voice as sweet and guileless as one could hope for in a child of nine.

Obi-Wan doesn't need to step out from where he’s cloaked in the alleyway’s shadows to know Anakin's little cherub face is upturned and his hair is catching gold in the streetlight. He doesn’t need to round the corner to see that this unfortunate mortal is utterly transfixed by the beautiful child that is seemingly alone and unprotected in this harsh, unforgiving city.

A car passes by, bright headlights cutting through the dark. Obi-Wan watches as a rat scurries toward a nearby dumpster. The scent of refuse and fetid rot is heavy, the late summer’s heat has yet to give way to a cooler autumn, and there’s a thrum of danger that lingers in the weak breeze which has little to do with the two monsters that are here together, one hunting and the other waiting. The sound of a gunshot splits the air, and Obi-Wan knows why their grand master has chosen this as his newest place to hold court.

The city is bleeding. Who could possibly notice their victims among all the dead?

Obi-Wan waits for Anakin to lead his prey into the alley—to seek out a place away from the view of the living to slake his thirst, just as Obi-Wan taught him to do—but he never comes. Instead Obi-Wan hears the wet, unmistakable sounds of Anakin feeding. The breathy keen of the mortal: bleeding out and loving it.

Annoyance flickers through Obi-Wan, but that is nothing new. In the seventy years since his death, Anakin has not let a single opportunity to bedevil Obi-Wan pass him by. Even as a youngling, fresh from his deathbed and lost to his hunger, Anakin still managed to flout all of Obi-Wan’s careful instructions at every turn, knowing full well that all he had to do was turn those luminous, pathetic child’s eyes on Obi-Wan and all would be forgiven. 

It is, therefore, a nice surprise when Anakin releases the human while Obi-Wan can still smell a thin stream of blood running through his veins. _Sip from as many as you need to feel sated,_ he has cautioned Anakin more times than he can count while Anakin rolled his eyes as he is made to listen to another recitation of Obi-Wan’s rules. _But never drink so much that you kill._

Obi-Wan has enough time to feel an affectionate glow settle into his bones before the crack of a neck being snapped echoes through the night. Hurrying forward, Obi-Wan can see the slumped over form of a man, pliant and cooling, and Anakin laughing delightedly over his corpse.

“Welcome back, Obi-Wan! I sensed you, lurking there amongst the garbage,” he says, tears of merriment brightening his eyes. “I figured that would get you to stop skulking in the shadows.”

There’s no reason to feel for the man’s pulse, Obi-Wan can taste his death from the alley, but he can’t help himself from stooping down to check anyway.

“Oh, leave him. He was a dirty old man that got what he deserved,” Anakin says, knocking the man sideways with a kick of his boot.

With a sigh of resignation Obi-Wan stands. “You’ve been spending far too much time in our grand master’s presence.”

“You’re just mad because he likes me more,” Anakin says with a toothy grin, and his canines glint sharp in the faint light.

The thought of Palpatine taking Anakin under his wing doesn’t anger Obi-Wan, it frightens him beyond measure, though he is careful not to let it show on his face. Closing his eyes, Obi-Wan breathes carefully as he tries to find some measure of serenity here among the unforgiving pavement and the skittering rats and the wail of a distant ambulance. 

When he finally opens his eyes it is to find Anakin watching him with a smirk. “I take it your yoga retreat proved satisfactory?”

“It wasn’t a yoga retreat,” Obi-Wan says, his irritation at having to explain this to Anakin once again sparks hot but he breathes through the worst of it. “I visited a monastic temple in the foothills of the—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Another attempt to purify yourself from this rank existence. I’ve heard you say it all to Master Dooku before.” Mischief dances across Anakin’s face as he steps nearer to Obi-Wan.

For a dead boy there is a vitality to Anakin that would rival the most warm-blooded of humans. An exuberance that he never seems to lose, no matter what horrors he’s been subjected to or atrocities he’s committed. It has been one hundred and twenty-two years since Obi-Wan has seen sunshine, and he can’t help but think of it whenever he’s in Anakin’s presence. It’s Obi-Wan’s favorite part about Anakin, the thing that he finds himself irresistibly drawn to night after night, decade after decade.

“What I want to know is this: what did you have to tell those monks at the foothills of the whatever mountains when you didn't show up to any of their daylight activities?”

“I didn't have to say anything at all,” Obi-Wan says truthfully. 

Anakin folds his arms across his chest, tilting his head as he stares at Obi-Wan with skepticism and Obi-Wan can’t help the slight slip of a smile that passes his lips. 

“It was a silent retreat.”

With a whooping laugh loud enough to be heard across blocks of this crumbling city, Anakin throws himself forward to hug Obi-Wan’s waist and Obi-Wan hates himself for returning his embrace without hesitation.

Under Palpatine’s tutelage, Anakin may very well become one of this century’s greatest monsters—and will undoubtedly someday be known as Obi-Wan’s most spectacular failure—but to Obi-Wan he will always be that little boy he’d stumbled upon in a flophouse surrounded by arid desert sands. The frail mortal that had been piteously clutching the hand of his dead mother even as he languished from the same sickness that had taken her life several days previous. The child that Obi-Wan couldn’t bear to watch waste away, too. 

When he’d begged his sire for help, Dooku didn't hesitate. He’d turned the pathetic whelp into a vampire that very night. Then, as Anakin had shivered and moaned and vomited through the worst of the change, Dooku had looked down his nose at Obi-Wan and said: “You raise the boy. See how far your precious rules get you when you have two mouths to feed,” before disappearing into the night.

“Come,” Anakin says, taking Obi-Wan’s hand and bringing his thoughts to the present. “Let’s return home. Get you out of these clothes and into something more flattering. Our sire is going to throw a fit when he sees you wearing a hoodie, you know how Master Dooku feels about this decade’s fashions.”

Obi-Wan stares at their joined hands—his pale with hunger and Anakin’s flushed from feeding. He pulls away to stick his cold, dead hands into the fraying pockets of his brown hoodie. “I’m not going to that place.”

“Don’t tell me you plan to wander the streets like a vagrant again. Obi-Wan, you know you’re just asking for sunlight to take you if you insist on continuing on like this.” Anakin hasn’t yet learned the trick of keeping his emotions from his face, or maybe he doesn't care enough to try. Right now he’s concerned and Obi-Wan is humbled by the intensity of his sentiment. “Why do you keep coming back to us? If you won’t stay at court and would rather flirt with your own destruction, why do you always come back?”

“For you, little brother,” Obi-Wan says, and he can’t help it. He reaches out to cup Anakin’s cheek with an affectionate palm. “Someone needs to make sure you stay out of trouble.”

#

With his face perpetually frozen in time at the age of nineteen, Obi-Wan finds it easier to spend his nights hidden amongst the other young adults with dubious morals at the local university.

He haunts their dive bars, attends evening lectures, and even manages to steal one undergrad’s ID card that he uses to borrow books from their library. He pages through Camus and Sartre, Kierkegaard and Voltaire as he senses the sun rising over whatever dilapidated hovel he’s chosen to hide away in for the time being. Before death takes him, as it does every day when the sunlight streams with piercing intent on the world of the living, he finds solace from his loneliness. 

Here, lost in the words of the greatest minds that have come and gone, he isn’t so alone. 

After feeding off-campus on a stumbling drunk that won’t notice a few extra moments of blackout added to his evening, Obi-Wan heads to the library. There is a slight chill in the air, a new season that hovers just on the horizon and tastes like a reprieve from the unrelenting stillness of summer’s heat. None of it really matters to Obi-Wan: he’s as impervious to the cold as he is to any other meteorological event, but it is nice to feel something change when so much of his afterlife is one yawning chasm of sameness. There’s a new scent that follows Obi-Wan on his walk through campus, and it’s one he’s never noticed before. Something earthy and grounded, and he wonders if there’s a plant blooming this late in the season that is the cause of it.

The librarian greets him at the door with a quiet: “Hi, Ben,” and Obi-Wan smiles as he waves. It’s a small wonder he hasn’t been caught for this little indulgence of his, and he can only surmise that the student athlete whose I.D. card he’d stolen hasn’t needed to rely on his academic merit to stay enrolled at university.

Obi-Wan is browsing the shelves when he notices it again. That scent, the same one he’d first caught a whiff of outside. He turns sharply, but all he can see is a middle-aged professor browsing the shelves nearby. The man turns when he feels Obi-Wan’s attention and he has the bluest eyes that Obi-Wan has ever seen. He’s handsome—with a careful beard and shoulder-length, dark hair that has only begun to be touched with silver—and Obi-Wan politely nods to him. The man seems surprised but he nods back before resuming his perusal of the books in front of his slightly off-center nose. 

Finally settling on a translation of Zen Master Dōgen’s writings, Obi-Wan checks his book out and lets the crispness of the evening’s breeze embrace him once more.

It isn’t long before he realizes that he has a shadow. The professor is silent enough, but his scent gives him away, now that Obi-Wan knows to take note of it. Drawing the man away from the hiving nighttime activity of the student body, Obi-Wan lures his stalker into the abandoned darkness of the campus’ chapel.

There is, apparently, no pressing need for God with this academic set, and he wonders what Nietzsche would have to say about that.

Up until now Obi-Wan has maintained a steady pace, but he hurries now, using his preternatural speed to disappear around a corner. He flips upward, taking to the trees and the advantage their height provides before doubling back. Sparing a moment to enjoy the sight of his pursuer spinning around with a frown creasing his leonine face, he finally drops back down to the ground on silent feet.

Standing behind the man, Obi-Wan calls out: “I like your poncho. You just don’t see enough of them these days.” He smiles when the professor spots him easily through the dark. Wariness creeps like a vine through his posture and his hands fall to his sides, though there is an energy there that Obi-Wan is suspicious of. “Are you following me?”

Instead of answering, the man nods to the book in Obi-Wan’s hand. “That’s an interesting choice. Have you read Master Dōgen before?”

Obi-Wan closes his eyes as he riffles through his memory to draw out the words he knows are in there somewhere. Finally he quotes: “ _When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, you will be called a buddha._ ” The man is regarding him carefully when Obi-Wan opens his eyes again. “Did I get it all, Professor?”

“You missed a couple lines in there but yes, that is the main thrust of it.” He clasps his hands in front of him. His ecru poncho falls around his lengthy form, and for a moment Obi-Wan can almost imagine this man wearing some sort of monastic robes, himself. “I’m curious, indulge me for a moment. Is there a significance to what you chose to quote? Is that a philosophy you subscribe to?”

He doesn’t rush to answer, instead he gives the question careful consideration. “I suppose I do,” Obi-Wan answers at last. “From a certain point of view.

“Are you not compassionate to sentient beings, then?”

Obi-Wan is intrigued by this attention. He is enjoying the way those blue eyes are taking him in, like Obi-Wan is a puzzle that he is determined to solve, and the scent of living, sprouting things becomes more apparent the closer he steps toward the man. 

“I do my best, but when one’s livelihood is dependent on nothing but ‘unwholesome actions’ it’s a bit difficult to claim enlightenment.”

The professor doesn’t seem surprised by his words and there’s no change of expression to indicate that he is unaware of what ‘unwholesome actions’ Obi-Wan might be referring to.

Interesting.

“So why are you following a fellow seeker through the night, Professor? Or do you give all students this same level of attention?”

“I’m also curious what your thoughts are in relation to that attachment you spoke of,” The man says ignoring Obi-Wan’s question completely. “Are you very attached to death?”

“Frankly, I could do without it,” Obi-Wan responds truthfully. “Though it does seem awfully attached to me.”

“If it's any consolation, I can assure you that this is the last time you’ll have to encounter death, Vampire.” In an action as smooth as any Renaissance swordsman bringing forth their rapier, the man withdraws a wooden stake from somewhere beneath his poncho. “Incidentally, I’m not a professor.”

“Yes, I’m starting to see that now.”

Obi-Wan isn’t afraid. A calmness settles across his skin. The air comes to him clearer than it ever has before—bringing with it that scent that he wants to fall into, roll around in, and never again leave behind. If this is how his tenure on this world is finally brought to an end, he finds that he is more than satisfied that it will be by this man’s hand. Glancing down at the hand in question, he can see that it is as graceful and well-formed as the rest of him and a fluttering giddiness alights in Obi-Wan’s belly.

Obi-Wan has fantasized about what it would be like to be so close to the final moments of his existence. He’s imagined facing it stoically, bravely, but never once had he ever anticipated the sheer glee that would be shivering down his spine. He knows he’s smiling but he can’t stop himself. 

The man cautiously draws closer and Obi-Wan lowers his arms to his side. “Aren’t you going to fight me?” he asks.

“You seem well acquainted with Dōgen’s teachings, and I’m finding I _prefer to be defeated in the presence of the wise._ ” Obi-Wan laughs, bright and joyful, and it has been over a century since he’s heard himself make a sound like that. “Though I’m fairly certain he hadn’t intended to be taken quite so literally.”

He is now close enough that Obi-Wan can count the individual hairs that frame his face. If he were to reach out, Obi-Wan could trace each one, following it like the strands of fate that Plato’s three Moirai sisters read, from beginning to end.

The pointed end of the stake rests against Obi-Wan’s chest and he gets the inexplicable urge to press his lips to the man’s in thanks for what he is about to do. 

The man hesitates as Obi-Wan holds his gaze, steady. “Come on, now, Hunter,” Obi-Wan goads with a grin. “Show me what you're capable of."

Instead the lines on his forehead come together in a press of confusion and then the man is pulling away. “No,” he says and Obi-Wan’s heart plummets to his feet. “No, I don’t think I will.”

With that his long, elegant hands disappear into the folds of his poncho. The man walks away and it isn’t long before he is gone—swallowed whole by the night. 

#

A week passes before Obi-Wan sees him again. A week where he can think of nothing else but the tall, beautiful man that had pressed a wooden stake against his heart and then left it intact. 

He’s drinking at a bar when Obi-Wan finds him at last. Sidling up to where he’s perched on a tall bar stool, surrounded by other mortals, Obi-Wan takes a deep breath to catch his earthy scent again. His mouth is pressed to an amber lager bottle, his eyes are glued to a game that is playing above the bartender’s head, and there is a bowl of peanuts by his elbow. 

“Good evening, Professor.” Obi-Wan says and he only gets a flicker from those blue eyes before he’s back to watching the television.

“You again.”

“Are you sure you won't do it?” Obi-Wan says, pressing himself in close so that he can whisper directly into his ear. Score one for this more enlightened age, because the gruff men at the bar barely even glance at the portrait of intimacy the two men are making. “I promise I won’t make a fuss.”

He turns his face toward Obi-Wan. His breath is warm and yeasty from his drink, and Obi-Wan has to stop himself from licking his lips to taste where the man’s exhale has settled. “You’re a funny little thing, aren't you?”

It isn’t exactly the violent, murderous reaction he’d been hoping for, and Obi-Wan draws away, disappointed. The man reaches a long leg around Obi-Wan’s body to hook an empty stool and pulls it closer, gesturing for him to sit down. The bartender appears, to ask what he’ll have, and the hunter responds before Obi-Wan can open his mouth. “Get him what I’ve got, Cedric.”

A matching amber bottle settles in front of Obi-Wan with a thunk and it makes a frothy head bubble over the side of the lip. Obi-Wan reaches for a napkin to clean off the mess and he catches the hunter looking at him sideways with a small smirk before returning to his game. 

Obi-Wan waits, holding the sweating bottle between his hands until his palms are wet from it. Finally, the television breaks into a commercial. “I’m not little,” Obi-Wan says, now that he finally has the hunter’s attention.

A wide smile flashes across his face and his blue eyes flicker with amusement. “You are from— what was it you said before?—from a certain point of view.”

“Mm,” Obi-Wan hums, a noncommittal noise. He isn’t used to being quoted. In fact, most of his brethren tend to go out of their way _not_ to listen to Obi-Wan lest he starts in on his notoriously rigid moral code, so this is a new feeling. The lager bottle is still slicking Obi-Wan’s hands and he dries them on the thighs of his jeans. “You know I can’t drink this, right?”

“I know,” the hunter says, grabbing a handful of peanuts and washing them down with a last swig of beer before he switches out his empty bottle for the one in front of Obi-Wan. “But I was close to needing another round anyway.”

Obi-Wan picks up his now-empty bottle and holds it up. “Sláinte,” he says, and the man clinks their bottles together before taking his next sip of beer.

“And you can stop with that ‘professor’ business. The name’s Qui-Gon.”

“Obi-Wan,” he responds and gets a slight nod before the game starts back up and he loses Qui-Gon’s attention to the television once more.

#

Obi-Wan trails Qui-Gon as he makes his rounds at night. Most of the time the mortal doesn’t seem to notice his presence as Obi-Wan jumps across rooftops and stays to the shadows, keeping him in view as he passes undisturbed through the city streets. This is the first time that Obi-Wan has seen him encounter a vampire on his nightly walks and he watches Bruck Chun sneer at the hunter before sending him flying into the cement side of an abandoned factory. 

For a moment Obi-Wan wonders if he’s going to see Qui-Gon die tonight.

Whatever Obi-Wan’s feelings of Bruck Chun might be, he is objectively a good fighter and mean about it, too. Over the decades they have frequently been at one another’s throat, both figuratively and literally, and so Obi-Wan knows first hand how often his anger burns into a fuel that he uses to cruel, merciless advantage. 

This time, it seems, his anger may very well be his downfall. 

Qui-Gon rises from where he’s landed. He charges at the white-haired vampire who stops to give a roar of fury. It doesn’t slow Qui-Gon down in the slightest and within three swift moves he has Chun pinned and staked. Obi-Wan watches in fascination as his old nemesis shrivels like the corpse he ought to be, crackling in fault lines that sink into crumbling bone until all that is left behind is a pile of ash. Qui-Gon kicks the pile with his boot, smoothing it out until it is indistinguishable from the dirt that now serves as the vampire’s grave. 

“Friend of yours?” Qui-Gon asks around gasps of exertion that he is trying to disguise.

“Good Lord, no. He's a tosser.” Obi-Wan says, stepping out from where he’d been dispassionately watching their battle from the shadows. “Well, _was_ a tosser, I suppose. We were changed around the same time, and I assure you there is no love lost between us.” Obi-Wan can hear the heavy beating of Qui-Gon’s heart. He can smell the sweat that lines his scalp and trickles down his spine. Somewhere along the way Qui-Gon had cast off his poncho, and Obi-Wan fishes it off the ground, offering it to him now. “I am impressed by you, though. For a mortal, you are quick. Strong, too.”

“Thank you,” he says, accepting both the poncho and the praise with an incline of his head. Obi-Wan watches, fascinated, as he begins to reholster his stake on his belt, where apparently he’d been keeping it beneath the ridiculous poncho he insists on wearing.

“Don’t put that away yet,” Obi-Wan says, standing close enough that he can rest the tip of his finger on the stake’s point, half imagining that he can feel the destruction of Bruck Chun along the whorls of wood. 

He takes Qui-Gon by the wrist, and can feel the thunderous rush of his heartbeat as it pounds with desperate life beneath Obi-Wan’s touch. Guiding Qui-Gon’s hand, Obi-Wan settles the stake into position against his own chest. Blue eyes—the color of a sky that Obi-Wan can no longer see—meet his.

“Do it,” he says. “Don’t think, just do it.”

“Have you killed anyone since last we spoke?” Qui-Gon asks and Obi-Wan rears back.

“No,” he says, strangely stung by the question.

“Well, then, you won’t die by my hand tonight, Obi-Wan.”

Qui-Gon easily breaks free from the hold on his wrist and tucks the stake back into his belt while Obi-Wan watches.


	2. Chapter 2

Obi-Wan is fang deep in a mortal, hidden from view behind a dumpster, when Anakin lands kitten-soft in the alley beside where Obi-Wan is kneeling. The drop from the building above is easily twenty stories and this level of control is a power Anakin shouldn’t have access to.

Wrinkling his nose, Anakin brushes a hand down the front of his black shirt as if that could stop the dumpster’s stink from sinking into the fine fabric. Black is a severe color on the boy, and one that their flamboyant sire would never have chosen, himself. Anakin’s pants are black, too—well-fitted and understated in a way that whispers luxury—and Obi-Wan can see the hand of their grand master in all of this.

The man beneath Obi-Wan is groaning. His arm encircles Obi-Wan’s neck as he attempts to pull the vampire closer into his vulnerable flesh. Obi-Wan tries to be quick about it, releasing the human before he can get much louder, while he studiously ignores the erection that has begun to strain the front of the mortal's jeans.

Obi-Wan has never been comfortable with the reactions his feedings can engender—there’s something perverse about the intense pleasure humans feel as they are brought closer and closer to death. It’s worse, somehow, with an audience and Obi-Wan can feel the fresh blood that is coursing through his body pooling in his cheeks.

Anakin snorts. "Only you, Obi-Wan, could still be embarrassed by your meal getting a hard-on after all this time."

Ignoring him, Obi-Wan pricks the end of his own finger with a sharp fang and waits until a drop of blood wells to the surface. He brushes the blood across the puncture marks on the man’s neck, careful not to stain his cream colored turtleneck, and the little wound knits together quickly now that it's been touched by vampire blood. 

Anakin mutters something in a mocking tone but Obi-Wan is ignoring him as the mortal starts to surface. "Who—" the man tries to ask but he's unfocused, eyes rolling about as he tries to come down from the high of the feed.

"An excellent question," Anakin laughs. "I would also propose: 'what?' and 'why?'"

"Anakin," Obi-Wan chides before turning his attention back to the man in his arms. Gathering the thrum of power he can feel shivering through his newly sated veins, Obi-Wan speaks: "You are not afraid.”

“I am not afraid,” the man says, sighing as his fear dissipates.

“You will go home and fall asleep,” Obi-Wan continues as the man repeats his words helplessly entranced. “When you wake up our encounter will be nothing more than a dream.”

“A dream,” the man agrees as the thrall takes hold. He leaves the alley without another glance back.

“I take it this isn’t a social call,” Obi-Wan says when they are alone. 

Anakin at least has sense enough to stare at the brick wall rather than Obi-Wan when he says: “I’m here to tell you that Master Palpatine is requesting your presence at court.” 

“You know I won’t go.” Annoyance makes his words clipped and Anakin threads his arm through Obi-Wan’s, leading him out to the sidewalk where they can lose themselves to Restaurant Row and the Friday night bar-hopping crowds. Or lose themselves as much as is possible when, to all outward appearances, Obi-Wan is keeping this blond-headed, blue-eyed, couture-wearing child out far past his bedtime.

“I know,” Anakin is saying as they walk, arm in arm. “I said you wouldn’t be swayed, not even if the invitation came from me.”

“Then why— ” he starts to ask, but abruptly has to steer the two of them around a drunken group that is staggering wildly, shrieks of laughter starting up as one of their members falls to her knees at the curb to vomit.

“It’s not just you. Our grand master is calling all of our line to his side,” Anakin explains with a self-assuredness that gives Obi-Wan pause. “Some of the other lineages have begun to nip at his heels, to strike out in ways that are becoming harder to ignore. There’s talk of a war— 

“There’s always talk of a war,” Obi-Wan says with a bemusement that Anakin chooses to ignore, even though it is clear that it rankles him.

“—and now there have been whispers of a new danger: a hunter who has been travelling around steadily picking off our kind one by one.”

“A hunter?” Obi-Wan answers quickly, scoffing loudly, before thoughts of Qui-Gon can so much as enter his mind. He has his own plans for the hunter and there’s no need to bring everyone else into it before Obi-Wan is a pile of dust. “Now we’re resorting to tales meant to keep younglings in line?”

“It isn’t a tale.”Anakin stops, pulling his arm out from Obi-Wan. Immediately, he feels the distance between them with an acute pang. Mortals are stepping around them, giving them dirty looks for taking up so much of the sidewalk with their standoff. Anakin doesn't seem to notice—more likely he doesn’t care.

Obi-Wan does, so he steps to the side, seeking out the dark of another alley. Anakin follows, huffing when he finds himself surrounded by the stench of more refuse, but Obi-Wan isn’t comfortable speaking the business of the undead where living ears can hear.

“Bruck Chun hasn’t been seen in over a month,” Anakin says, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Oh yes, because there is no one else among our brethren that would want to see Bruck Chun destroyed.” Obi-Wan laughs and Anakin’s face, usually so quick to give away his emotions, is inscrutable. “I’m surprised at you, Anakin, surely you know better than to fall for all of this melodrama.”

“The more kin that Master Palpatine surrounds himself with, the safer he will be,” Anakin says firmly. “And the safer he is, the safer we will all be.”

“Is that based on anything other than the paranoid word of a creature that is old enough to have seen two millennia come and go?”

“It isn’t paranoia if they really are trying to get us.”

“ _Us,_ ” Obi-Wan says, with a scoff. “I haven’t been a part of an ‘us’ in a very long time.”

“You are one of us.” Anakin says, stepping nearer, voice curdling with menace. For all that he barely reaches the bottom of Obi-Wan’s ribs, there is a roiling intensity to Anakin that makes him seem so much larger than Obi-Wan is accustomed to. So much more powerful. “You can run off to as many retreats as you’d like, surround yourself with as many books as you can gather. At dawn’s end you die, the same as the rest of us. You feed on the living, the same as the rest of us. Meditation won’t save you from the truth of our existence, and vagrancy won’t be enough to keep you from your rightful place at our grand master’s feet.”

Obi-Wan won’t let himself be rattled—not by the boy that he’d nursed into this existence when he was little more than a blind, quivering pup. “So you think,” he says.

“So I know. Master Palpatine has taken me into his confidence. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen these last few months.”

“And what nightmares has he been spinning for you, little brother?” Obi-Wan asks softly. Carefully.

He’s been so preoccupied with this hunter, chasing down Qui-Gon through the night, that he’d forgotten what other horrors the darkness could produce. Anakin has always been his responsibility, his to protect, and in this Obi-Wan has failed him.

Anakin ignores the question. Instead he draws himself taller. His expression is diamond-hard and his eyes glitter strangely. “You should consider coming with me. You aren't going to like the next messenger we send should Master Palpatine have reason to request your presence once more.” 

“What aren't you telling me?”

He shakes his head, an action that severs the air and Obi-Wan feels the desolation of it.

“I love you, Obi-Wan—and some part of me always will—but my loyalties can no longer be with you. Not when so much has changed. Not when I’ve changed as much as I have.” There is a strange glow to Anakin’s eyes that Obi-Wan has never seen before, an animalistic yellow that flashes through them. A shiver creeps down Obi-Wan’s spine, the prey only now sensing the predator. “The balance of our world is at risk of tipping. You need to decide which side of the scale you are going to fall with.”

Anakin leaps vertically into the air and lands somewhere thirty stories above Obi-Wan’s head. It is an impossible feat that Obi-Wan can only stare at from where he stands, not nearly powerful enough to follow.

*

“There you are.” The voice that cuts through the serenity of the city park doesn’t surprise Obi-Wan. He’s been smelling the hunter since he’d entered a block behind where Obi-Wan’s been ambling among the trees and graffitied benches, lost to his thoughts. 

Qui-Gon and his ever-present poncho approach, lit by one of the few lamps that still burn along this desolate pathway. The rest of the lights don’t seem to have worked for years, a hunch that Obi-Wan has confirmed with every empty dime bag, forgotten syringe, and used condom he passes.

“I’ve been wondering where my wayward vampire had gotten to this evening.” 

Qui-Gon’s long legs make quick work of the ground between them and soon he is matching Obi-Wan step for step. He should tell the hunter to leave; Anakin has all but confirmed that Obi-Wan is being observed. Maybe not at this moment, because Obi-Wan casts his senses out and doesn’t detect another vampire anywhere, but Obi-Wan knows he will be watched soon enough. Add that to the revelation that the others are aware of a human that’s been exterminating their kind, and it all accumulates, making this walk through the park a Very Bad Idea.

Still, he can’t bring himself to turn Qui-Gon away.

Silence drapes across their shoulders, a companion between them that bridges the distance between their bodies. Obi-Wan shouldn’t be surprised that this mortal towering a head above him is at ease with the quiet when so much of their time together has been spent with Qui-Gon’s ocean blue eyes regarding Obi-Wan gravely as he tries to make him plunge a stake through his chest. Right now the quiet is a comfort and one that Obi-Wan is desperately in need of.

They walk deeper and deeper into the park where the trees are bare. Leaves have yellowed and died and are now in heaping piles that lay like gathered corpses along the ground just beyond the paved pathway. Bare branches plead up to the clear autumn sky with bony fingers, and a moon winks distractedly from the cloudless expanse of black.

“I take it you aren't going to ask me to destroy you tonight?” Qui-Gon asks at last and Obi-Wan smiles a grim smile that has very little to do with amusement.

“No,” he says and means it. “Not tonight.”

“You seem tired.”

“As tired as any immortal being that doesn’t require sleep can be, I suppose.”

Qui-Gon acknowledges the point with a tilt of his head. “Not tired, then, but weary.”

“Weary,” Obi-Wan agrees with a nod. “I am undoubtedly weary.”

The sound of traffic is insulated by the trees out here and he would be very surprised if Qui-Gon could hear the city’s clatter and clang from where they are. As it is, they are far enough from it that Obi-Wan could almost fool himself into believing that he is back in the foothills of a Japanese mountain and the sound of moving vehicles is a distant stream. He can almost pretend that he’d never left the buddhist monastery for this crowding closeness of a city.

Qui-Gon breaches the distance between them and Obi-Wan stares down, mute and uncomprehending, when a hand that thrums with a mortal’s pulse clasps his.

“Come here,” he bids and Obi-Wan wouldn’t be able to disobey even if he wanted to.

They leave the path behind. Brittle leaves yield with each step that they take toward a clearing, and when they get to the center of it Qui-Gon drops his hand to remove his poncho. With a sweep he lays it on the ground. 

“Aren’t you cold?” Obi-Wan asks.

Obi-Wan isn’t, of course. His brown hoodie serves as a place for Obi-Wan to hide from the world more than it acts as a barrier to the seasons, but he can already see the gooseflesh that is prickling along Qui-Gon’s exposed arms.

“I’ll survive,” Qui-Gon says, laying down on his poncho-turned-blanket.

He beckons and Obi-Wan is intrigued enough to go willingly when he’s pulled down to the ground. Warmth— delicious, heady, addictive, human warmth—surrounds him and Obi-Wan has to shut his eyes against the desperate _need_ to sink into Qui-Gon teeth first.

If he notices Obi-Wan’s lapse, Qui-Gon doesn’t make mention of it. Instead he arranges their bodies until Obi-Wan is lying beside him.

“What are we doing?”

“What does it look like?” Humor colors his words as Qui-Gon’s breath blossoms white with every exhale. “We’re stargazing.”

“Oh, yes, of course. It’s a wonder I didn’t piece that together sooner, what with the light pollution and all.”

“Hush,” he says, but it isn’t a rebuke. There is a fondness there that gives Obi-Wan pause.

The winds rustle through the barren tree limbs, bending them as they pass. Qui-Gon shivers at the worst of it, but he doesn’t complain, he only moves in closer. Obi-Wan knows too well that his skin still retains the coolness of death. He’s only had one small sip to eat all night and it wasn’t nearly enough to raise his temperature. He’s syphoning off whatever heat Qu-Gon’s body is trying to produce and it can’t be very pleasant for a bright, warm-blooded mortal.

A bright, warm-blooded mortal whose life is predestined to shine for an instant in time only to be snuffed out like a flame, never to be lit again.

“ _Your body,_ ” Obi-Wan recites as he stares with vampire vision past the thick layer of city haze to the pinpricks of light burning holes in the mourning shroud draped above them. “ _Is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment,_ ” 

The nighttime sky is velvety with its vastness, and the man beside him feels so small, so inconsequential, and far too fragile to be wandering this world alone.

“Dōgen, again?” Qui-Gon asks and Obi-Wan hums an affirmative. “Hm,” he says, and Obi-Wan thinks that’s all he’ll have to say but then Obi-Wan can feel his chest rise, hear the air as it fill his lungs, and he speaks: “ _I know I am deathless, I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass, I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night._ ”

Obi-Wan feels a smile tug across his face. “Whitman,” he says and can feel Qui-Gon nod.

“‘Song of Myself.’”

A new breeze stirs, and Obi-Wan can smell the sprouting perfume of Qui-Gon in it. He wants to turn his nose into it, to take a liberty that he somehow knows without asking that Qui-Gon won’t deny him, but he can’t. It’s a familiarity that he has no right to, so Obi-Wan stays where he is, carefully studying the sky. 

“Who did we kill?” he asks, because there is a sorrow in the way Qui-Gon recited Whitman that Obi-Wan knows the taste of too well.

“Tahl.”

A name spoken with the thick chords of lamentation. 

“You were in love?” he asks, though he doesn’t need to. He already knows the answer.

“Yes.”

Obi-Wan can feel shame and regret for this unknown person’s passing as it crowds his chest. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“You didn't kill her.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Something brushes against his hand and Obi-Wan raises his head to see Qui-Gon’s fingers stretch wide until they find his: an offer. An overture. 

“I know,” Qui-Gon says, and even though it goes against everything Obi-Wan has ever lectured to Anakin about the dangers of getting attached to these mortals that do nothing but die like mayflies, Obi-Wan hooks their little fingers together as he lowers his head back to the ground.

It is a small intimacy, but it is more than enough.

*

Nield Daan. Graphic designer. Survived by a mother, a father, and three brothers. 

Obi-Wan had only known him as the man wearing a cream-colored turtleneck that Obi-Wan tried so hard to keep from staining.

Cerasi Melida. Aspiring astrophysicist. Survived by a father. 

All that Obi-Wan recognizes of the photo that flashes across the television screen is her copper hair, which he’d idly noticed was so much like his own before biting into her wrist.

There’s more victims—one for every night since Obi-Wan had rejected Anakin’s invitation a week ago—and Obi-Wan forces himself to sit through the news report even though everything in him is screaming to bolt. 

The television in the student center is muted, but he reads the captions as closely as if they were a philosophical treatise. He tries to parse out meaning and tease out truths between the lurid details of death and dismemberment. It’s being called the work of a serial killer. The victims share little in common except for their approximate ages and there’s a graphic beside the anchor’s head that reads “Butcher of the Young.”

The families are on now—pleading for someone to come forward, to help identify the killer—and Obi-Wan turns to leave. Behind him he can now see the university students have gathered. Youthful faces, the same age as the victims, are turned up to watch the news story. Their bodies, usually so pungent with pheromones, are now perfumed with the scent of fear. It is a fear so sharp, so bitter and thick that he gags to smell it now. Obi-Wan has to stop himself from using his vampiric strength to clear a path to the door so that he can escape.

Hurrying through the winding university campus, Obi-Wan pulls his hood up and keeps his hands in his pockets. It isn’t for anonymity’s sake: Obi-Wan knows he’s being watched. Now that he is looking for it he can feel the place where the night air gives way to shielding fortified by pain and darkness. The fraying hood surrounding his face is a comfort, and one he won’t begrudge himself now that he knows who has been sent to bring Obi-Wan to heel.

_You aren't going to like the next messenger we send,_ Anakin had said, and it is with gallow’s humor that Obi-Wan can acknowledge that for all Anakin has changed, he certainly still knows Obi-Wan enough to know this.

Obi-Wan has never had reason to cross paths with Palaptine’s executioner, though his appellative is well known. If Maul has ever had a mortal name it was forgotten long ago, swept away by a river of blood and tears, drowned out by the echoes of screams through the centuries. He has stalked the streets of Victorian London, terrorized Cleveland in the years after the Great Depression, and now he has been given permission to brutalize again in Obi-Wan’s name.

They meet two nights later on a rooftop. Obi-Wan has tried to keep moving, not to linger too long in any one place, but if it has stopped Maul’s butchery he cannot say.

“Master Palpatine formally requests your presence at court.” Maul says, stepping around an HVAC unit and the hum of machinery nearly drowns out his soft, cultured words. Obi-Wan isn’t sure what he was expecting from his encounter with a creature as depraved as Maul, but this refined accent isn’t it.

“I won’t go,” Obi-Wan says and Maul doesn’t seem surprised in the least.

“Then this will continue on until you do. Every mortal you sip from I will destroy.”

“Then I will no longer feed,” Obi-Wan says with a reckless daring he only half feels.

Maul smiles, so widely that Obi-Wan can see that he has filed every single one of his teeth into sharp points. “We shall see how long you last, young Master,” he says and then he is gone, leaving behind only the memory of those blazing yellow eyes as Maul had stared at Obi-Wan like he’d wanted to trace the contours of his skull from the inside.

*

Obi-Wan is nothing if not an expert at adhering to an impossible set of rules, and now he has two new ones that are as impossible as they come.

Don’t feed. Don’t find Qui-Gon.

The latter is accomplished easily enough. He’s followed the hunter’s routes and knows that on the nights Qui-Gon isn’t taking in a game at a bar he likes to ramble restlessly through the city. So, Obi-Wan rambles restlessly, too, and whenever he gets a whiff of something that is curling with verdant life it serves as a bracing reminder that Obi-Wan is being stalked by rancid death, and so he turns the other way.

Weeks pass. The first snowflakes of the season flutter down from the sky, and wherever Obi-Wan walks he finds colorful lights wrapped around banisters and lining apartment windows. He doesn’t stop, of course, he moves past the holiday cheer and through the jovial crowds, keeping his eyes down and his pace brisk. He ignores the smells of blood warmed by brandy and whiskey and scotch and any number of other spirits that are being shared among friends in the restaurants and bars he passes. He turns away from the office parties that have spilled onto the sidewalk, the men in button down shirts and the women teetering on their high heels, mouths painted dark burgundies that match the wine stains on their teeth.

Soon it is New Year’s Eve and everyone is drinking champagne, dressed in blacks and golds. Obi-Wan doesn’t stop, he keeps walking even as he hears the chants counting down the last moments until another year has passed.

Still Maul follows him. Slower now, because Obi-Wan is moving slower.

The city is blanketed as deep winter settles in. The cheer of the holiday season is long past and now there is only snow measured by inches and cold measured in layers. The wind whistles a warning as it cuts through alleyways and the curbs are turned into a mess of sludge that mortals leap over to stay dry.

Obi-Wan doesn’t leap over any of it. He can’t. He’s sluggish now and it’s all he can do to trudge with his head down from dusk until dawn before crawling into someplace dark and dank to die in until he has to get up and do it all over again.

He’s never gone this long without feeding, and there is a curious shiver to the world. Or maybe the world isn’t shivering, maybe he is, but it’s too hard to say for sure.

There’s a park that he half-recognizes, and a pond that is crusted over by a thick layer of ice. It’s marked up in scrolling scars and he has to think hard until he remembers the words ‘ice skating.’ They only flicker through his mind for a second, though, before they’re gone.

Nothing stays with him anymore. All is impermanence and ephemerality, all is a child's burnt stick at night. He blinks. Those words are so familiar, and he knows they must be from something he’s read, but he can’t place it now.

Snow is falling again. There’s a bench by the pond and Obi-Wan sits on it. He isn't cold and still he's shaking so badly his teeth are clattering, and that’s new enough to be alarming, but only for a moment. Nothing lasts longer than a moment anymore.

Pulling his knees into his chest, Obi-Wan holds them as if he might be able to contain himself. As if he could stop his body from shivering apart. Maul stands by a tree, the first he’s seen the other vampire in months, and his yellow eyes burn through the night with menace. Obi-Wan should keep moving, but he can’t. This is it. He’s always wondered what the limit is to this impervious body of his and he seems to have found it. 

He’s still alive, of course, but he’s gone so long without feeding that he is a husk of his former self. Obi-Wan lays his forehead against his knees and closes his eyes. When he looks up Maul is still there, watching. Waiting. So he closes his eyes again. Time is infinite and stagnate, yet somehow when he looks up again Maul is gone.

There is a strange cast to the air and Obi-Wan startles when he realizes that it’s dawn turning the world around him blue. He needs to leave, to find a place to hide from the day, but he can’t move. Daylight brightens the park and his skin begins to burn. The pain is unlike anything he’s ever felt before and he gasps as he buries his face in his knees once more.

“Obi-Wan?” a voice travels across the air and he knows that’s his name, he knows he is being impolite by not responding, but he can’t speak for the ragged sobs that are tearing out his chest.

“Jesus,” the voice says and Obi-Wan wants to agree. Yes, Jesus and Shiva and Allah, and any of the others that want to get in on this moment, too. His skin is scorched earth, his body is inert, and all Obi-Wan can do is ride out this torment until the bitter, painful, hopeless end.

Something falls around him, darkness blankets his body, and all at once the pain stops.

“I’ve got you,” the voice says and again Obi-Wan wants to agree—yes, you do indeed have me— but he’s too distracted by the feel of wool against his skin and the scent of vines that wrap around his lungs. He is lifted, cradled to a chest that houses a human heart which is pounding with something that sounds very much like human fear.

That’s all Obi-Wan knows, though, because after that he is claimed by death, just as he is every morning.


	3. Chapter 3

Sound comes back to Obi-Wan first: the whoosh of a shower running and the kick of an A.C. unit turning on.

Sensation is next: the dryness of artificial heat blowing across his skin and a light pressure of something wriggling on his chest.

Waking up to rats nestling around him is nothing new—it happens far more frequently than Obi-Wan cares to admit when he’s forced to hunker down in sewers and underground tunnels for the day—but the duckling peering down at him certainly is.

Somewhere nearby the shower shuts off.

“Quack,” the duckling says solemnly from Obi-Wan’s chest. A white bandage has been carefully wrapped around its downy, yellow body, immobilizing one barely-formed wing. 

“Hello there,” Obi-Wan rasps back, still too weak to do anything more.

A door pushes open and footsteps hurry to his side, brought out by Obi-Wan’s voice. Qui-Gon is so fresh from the shower his skin is still pink. His long hair has turned dark from his soak as rivulets steadily trickle down his bare chest—long lines that intersect a spiderweb’s worth of old and new scars. Around his hips there’s a towel that he holds closed with one hand. Even as cotton-headed as Obi-Wan is, he knows to train his gaze carefully on blue eyes and away from the sight of Qui-Gon’s body: wet and far too close to naked for comfort. 

The hunter doesn’t seem to notice Obi-Wan, he has eyes only for the duckling. Murmuring a quiet: “Oh, how did you get out?” he tucks the towel so that it stays in place. Large, gentle hands scoop the duckling off Obi-Wan’s chest and Qui-Gon takes the little creature away.

When he returns the duckling is gone and any questions Obi-Wan might have about its presence evaporate at the sight of Qui-Gon. He has found sweatpants that are now covering more of him, though they aren’t any more modest than the towel had been. Worn thin and perching precariously low, they cling to the taut muscles of his thighs and other places that Obi-Wan is trying very hard not to notice.

The towel is now on his head as Qui-Gon pats his hair dry and it takes a moment for Obi-Wan to realize that Qui-Gon is watching him, too. There’s something in his regard that makes Obi-Wan feel like he ought to be sitting up to meet his scrutiny. 

He tries but doesn’t get far. Qui-Gon is by his side in one quick stride of his long legs and Obi-Wan finds himself guided back down to the mattress by a warm hand on his shoulder.

“Easy,” Qui-Gon murmurs, following Obi-Wan down. He perches on the edge of the mattress while his hand stays where it is. He’s still staring with distant blue eyes, but his fingers are soft now, stroking unconscious, soothing circles along Obi-Wan’s shoulder. 

Obi-Wan has to try very hard not to notice the sharp scent of living, thrumming blood that is pulsing beneath the delicate tissues of Qui-Gon’s flesh.

“What?”

"It's nothing," Qui-Gon says, and Obi-Wan raises his eyebrows, skeptical. “You died,” he says at last.

The laugh that comes from Obi-Wan is distorted and short. " 's what I do."

“Yes, I knew that but I just didn’t….” His voice trails off and he shakes his head. There’s something more. Even in his starved, sluggish state Obi-Wan can see it, but in the short time he's known Qui-Gon, the mortal has never exactly been the chatty type.

Obi-Wan’s shoulder is suddenly bereft of Qui-Gon’s touch as Qui-Gon pulls away. He seems to come to a decision and with a nod, Qui-Gon changes a conversation he was only ever having in his own mind.“I haven’t seen you in months.”

A flash of fear. Obi-Wan’s thoughts are in a tangle: there isn’t a form to them, only a fracture of Maul and yellow eyes through the frozen dark. It rolls over him, an avalanche sliding down a trembling mountain, and he is swept away.

"I have to—" he tries to say but he can't land on what he has to do, his urges are wispy as fog and just as hard to grab hold of. Run, hide, leave Qui-Gon, keep Maul from finding Qui-Gon, keep Maul from killing in his name again. It’s all too much, the words too important to choose from and he can’t, he can’t— 

“You’re not going anywhere.” Qui-Gon is as uncompromising as time and it is easy to cede control to him in this moment. Obi-Wan settles back down to the bed without having to be pushed. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing all of this time but it can’t have been anything good. You look terrible.”

“Fasting,” Obi-Wan says and Qui-Gon levels a stern look at him.

“Is this part of some new attempt to destroy yourself?"

The question is a fair one but it still surprises Obi-Wan. It had never even occurred to him what the past few months might have looked like to a hunter that has only ever known Obi-Wan to plead for death.

"No."

"Good. I was hoping you’d say that." A hand sweeps across Obi-Wan’s temple, but it is gone so quickly that he can't be sure, in his current state, that it happened at all. "Then I think we can both agree this has gone too far and now it’s time to break your fast.” 

He shakes his head and the sudden motion of it is staggering. “Can’t.”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to negotiate here, Obi-Wan.” He raises his wrist to Obi-Wan’s face. All at once Obi-Wan is gripped by pure, unadulterated _want_. His teeth _ache_ to sink through thin skin and seek out the blue veins he can see snaking down into a forearm swollen with strength. “Now be a good vampire and drink my blood."

Obi-Wan's head is starting to spin. As much as he wants to, and _oh how he wants to_ , it's been too long since he last ate. Obi-Wan is terrified he won’t stop until he is sucking out the last drop of blood from Qui-Gon’s dying heart. 

He can't speak through this fear that is so vast it might as well hold all the universe neatly folded and tucked away within its confines.

He can't speak, can barely move, but still Obi-Wan forces himself to reach out with a hand that trembles. He stretches across the unfathomable distance between them until he can lay his palm on Qui-Gon’s wrist. Beneath his thumb Obi-Wan can feel the thud of a pulse. 

Whatever energy Obi-Wan had gained from his daylight rest has sapped away. He can’t bring himself to push that driving beat of flowing blood away. He can’t bring it closer, either. All he can do is stare into glacial eyes and hope to be understood.

The lines around Qui-Gon’s eyes soften. “I’ll stop you if you go too far.”

"How?"

He plucks something from the nightstand and lays it across Obi-Wan’s chest. Glancing down, Obi-Wan sees the familiar shape of a wooden stake.

“I have options.”

_You could have just left me to the sun_ , he wants to say but there’s no more words left in his lungs. He is drifting—floating along the edges of consciousness and not—and it’s like being on the park bench all over again. 

“Stay with me,” Qui-Gon says, voice uncompromising and Obi-Wan has no choice but to attend to the present. “No more arguments.” A knife appears in Qui-Gon’s hand, and Obi-Wan has lost time somewhere because he has no idea how it got there. Qui-Gon doesn’t hesitate. He brings the blade to his own flesh, slicing across the skin of his wrist.

“Here.” Qui-Gon says with a wry twist of his lips as blood swells across the cut. “Sláinte.”

Warm, coppery blood paints Obi-Wan’s tongue, but it’s only a faint taste. A tease. It’s not enough—not nearly enough—and he finds strength in the depth of his want to sit up. Hunger bays inside of his skull, a hounding call that he's powerless to ignore. Obi-Wan pierces fragile skin with his teeth, unleashing a current of blood that runs warm and thick into his mouth. Somewhere nearby he can hear a sharp, indrawn breath, but in this moment it doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters. 

He’s been so empty for so long and here is the taste of his salvation, coursing with vitality and nourishment, surging with strength and relief. Obi-Wan is moaning and someone else is moaning, too. The sounds only stoke his appetite. He pulls sharply on the arm he’s holding onto, desperate for more, and a weight falls down onto him. Something clatters from his chest to the floor and rolls away as Obi-Wan is covered in long limbs and something that smells _alive_ in every, every, every sense of the word.

"Obi-Wan," a rumbling voice says. He yearns to feel the vibrations of that deep sound across every inch of his body. 

Blood is pooling through his veins. It dribbles past the corner of his mouth. Glutted, he can feel his cheeks redden, his heart pounding, and the prickle of his nerves as they find one another again. It settles into every sinew and cell until he is warm for the first time in months.

His name is called again and this time it's a shout.

Nails bite into the skin of Obi-Wan’s exposed neck and the pain is so bright—so different from all this pleasure he's wrapped himself in—that it's enough to shake him from his fugue. He surfaces to find Qui-Gon sprawled on top of him, his arousal hard where it's pressed against Obi-Wan’s hip. 

His heart now has blood enough to pound with panic and Obi-Wan rolls himself off the bed in a desperate bid for distance. He hits the floor on his tailbone and doesn't stop moving until he can feel a wall at his back.

Qui-Gon doesn’t move.

With his senses finally returned, Obi-Wan can hear the butterfly pulse that passes through Qui-Gon’s veins. Obi-Wan knows he didn’t drink him down entirely, which is a relief. There’s no reason for him to be so still, and yet he doesn’t move. Obi-Wan forces himself to stand, to make his way back to the bed. Reaching out, Obi-Wan readies himself to turn Qui-Gon over but before he can the hunter rolls onto his back. It’s sudden enough that Obi-Wan startles. Breathy laughter, bright and fast, follows his instinctive jump backwards and now Obi-Wan can see that Qui-Gon isn’t dying.

He’s high.

Qui-Gon’s pupils are blown out and he presses a hand to his mouth to staunch his peels of mirth. It doesn’t do much good. “Is it always like that?” he asks between gulps of steadying air as Obi-Wan takes his hand off his mouth to inspect the wrist that is still bleeding. “I feel—” 

“Euphoric,” Obi-Wan supplies, fishing the towel off the floor from where it’s fallen, still heavy from Qui-Gon’s wet hair. He pats away the worst of the blood that smears across the pale skin of Qui-Gon’s inner wrist and he has to fight the urge to dispense with the towel entirely and lick it clean. The monster in him keens not to waste what he’d gladly continue to taste, but the civilized part of Obi-Wan that he clings to with all his might knows that he is as sated as he can be, all things considered. Any more would be to take advantage of Qui-Gon’s generosity. “It can take some like that, yes.”

Obi-Wan pierces his index finger with a bite of his canine tooth and spreads the blood across Qui-Gon’s wrist. He watches, fascinated, as the savaged corners of his wound draw back together until there is just smooth skin for Obi-Wan to clear of blood with another swipe of the towel.

“So fastidious,” Qui-Gon says with another laugh, this one isn’t as laced with hysteria as the other had been. “Just like that first time you found me.”

Confused, Obi-Wan can feel his eyebrows draw together. “What?”

“The beer,” Qui-Gon says. “The bottle spilled over and you cleaned it up. There was no reason to—you weren't even going to drink it—but you couldn't let the mess stand.”

Obi-Wan is used to observations of his habits being made with a sneer, but Qui-Gon's voice isn't cruel. It’s fond.

“I apologize for losing control of myself just now,” Obi-Wan says, because it needs to be said, and because he doesn’t know what else to do with a loose-limbed Qui-Gon who is looking up at him with eyes that are kinder than he deserves. 

“You didn’t. I don’t think you’re capable of losing control, Obi-Wan. Not entirely.” He starts to sit up but stops with a surprised, “Oh,” he drops back down to the bed.

“That would be from the blood loss,” he says with no small measure of relief. This is something Obi-Wan knows how to do. He’s coaxed plenty of mortals from the brink of death when Anakin’s feedings have nearly gone too far, and he finds solace in taking on the mantle of caretaker now. Qui-Gon lets himself be handled, and his lolling limbs stay wherever they’re arranged. He slides the covers out from under Qui-Gon so he can pack the man in a warming nest of blankets and pillows. 

“You’re looking better,” Qui-Gon says, watching as Obi-Wan works. He’s still intoxicated from the feeding and Obi-Wan is very careful not to notice that Qui-Gon is half-hard beneath his sweatpants before Obi-Wan covers him in the cheap, polyblend comforter.

When he looks up he sees Qui-Gon is smiling at him and that expression is more indecent than anything happening below his waist. Obi-Wan backs away from those fever-bright eyes, mumbling. “Relax there, I’ll bring you something to—” but of course Obi-Wan has no idea what Qui-Gon might have stocked as far as food or drink is concerned. “I’ll find something.”

There is a kitchenette, and in the kitchenette Obi-Wan finds stuff to make tea.

There isn’t a kettle, but there is a microwave and he feels a jolt of satisfaction when he manages to get a mug of water to rotate slowly inside of it. If only Anakin, who has often despaired of Obi-Wan’s ability to understand the technology of this brave new century, could see him now. It’s amusing only until he remembers the Anakin from his memories is different from the Anakin he’d last encountered—clad in black and filled with the fresh-faced zeal of a converted man. He can’t dwell too much on Anakin without an ache starting up below his ribs, so instead Obi-Wan examines the individually-wrapped tea bags that are shoved into a paper cup alongside plastic stirrer straws and condiments. 

On the counter there is a green brochure that proudly boasts of a complimentary breakfast in the lobby in what it claims is the best reviewed extended stay hotel in the area. Obi-Wan is dubious as he glances at the water-stained walls and the cigarette-burned window dressings. Down the hall he can hear the murmur of a television and the faint thrum of beating hearts from the floor’s other occupants.

He gets the tea steeping and then rummages through the sticky drawers and creaking cabinets. Other than the loaf of bread on the counter, there isn’t any food that he can find. It might keep the duckling in the bathroom appeased, but it won’t do much for Qui-Gon’s depleted blood levels. Squeezing honey into the tea from a packet, Obi-Wan hesitates and then adds the rest to a slice of soft bread.

“Breakfast in bed? How indulgent,” Qui-Gon says, sounding more like himself and less like a fang-addled human as Obi-Wan sets the meager meal on the nightstand before helping to prop him up against the cushioned headboard.

“I'll take your words for it,” Obi-Wan says with a snort. “I haven't eaten in a very long time.”

He watches Qui-Gon wrap his hands around the mug of tea, a faint smile curling his lips, and Obi-Wan thinks suddenly of those hands rubbing gentle circles into his shoulder. Impulsively, Obi-Wan reaches out, laying the tips of his fingers on Qui-Gon’s cheek just where it yields to his dark beard. He wants to say something. To thank Qui-Gon for what he’s done, to tell him how this is the first dusk in decades he’s been glad to wake up to, but words stick in his throat. He’s caught by blue eyes, as immobile as an insect in amber, and all he can do is stare back.

“You’re so beautiful,” Qui-Gon says, and it’s the perfect way to break this strange spell by virtue of it being the perfectly wrong thing to say.

“I know,” he replies, and he can feel his face turn to stone as he withdraws his hand from the warmth of Qui-Gon’s skin.

“Obi-Wan—” Qui-Gon says his name with concern in his voice as Obi-Wan starts to turn away. 

“Is there anything else I can get you? I didn’t see much else to eat, but maybe in the lobby—”

“Obi-Wan. Please come back.”

“—I can’t imagine there’s still breakfast laid out. Maybe a vending machine...” 

“Obi-Wan.”

And he knows, he knows, he _knows_ he’s being a coward, but Obi-Wan still hurries away, leaving an anemic, wan Qui-Gon behind.

*

Obi-Wan compels some change from the front desk clerk. When Qui-Gon finds him, he is staring into the depths of the blindingly well-lit vending machine, trying to imagine what from this staggering and nuanced assortment of foods he’s never heard of before Qui-Gon would actually want to eat. He doesn’t look up, but Obi-Wan can hear from the way Qui-Gon’s shoes are dragging across the carpet that he isn’t walking with his usual grace. 

“You shouldn’t be up.”

The alcove is narrow, so much so that when Qui-Gon stops to lean heavily against the edge of a wall, Obi-Wan is trapped between humming machines and the looming figure he’d only just tried to escape from.

“I’m sorry,” Qui-Gon says quietly. Humbly. It only makes Obi-Wan feel worse, and he shifts on his feet. “I feel like I misspoke.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Obi-Wan says, voice as bright as the inside of the vending machine. He feeds in a handful of quarters that clang, the sound thunderous in the abandoned lobby. “There are so many flavors of chips, can they really taste all that different?”

Qui-Gon doesn’t speak, he just waits and Obi-Wan can feel his chest cave in as, curling into himself, he buckles under the overwhelming _humanness_ of Qui-Gon’s concern. They are alone save for the clerk that is still a little dazed from Obi-Wan’s influence. Overhead a fluorescent bulb is so close to burning out it is flickering, which makes everything waver a bit.

“My master has an eye for beautiful things.” Obi-Wan finally responds. “It’s why he chose me for the change. To add to his collection of beautiful things.”

He waits, expecting Qui-Gon to say something, to apologize in that earnest, dignified way of his again. He steps nearer. Obi-Wan closes his eyes, bracing himself to be touched. Instead Qui-Gon pushes some buttons by Obi-Wan’s ear. 

Obi-Wan opens his eyes in time to see the machine whir to life, spitting out a selection that Qui-Gon retrieves from the bottom.

Trail mix. A practical choice, or so he's heard. He should have guessed. 

“Let’s go back to the room,” Qui-Gon says. “I’d like to hear more about it, if you feel up to talking about it.”

Shrugging, Obi-Wan stuffs his hands into his hoodie’s pockets and they make their way back to the elevator. The doors open and Qui-Gon is careful to stand far away from Obi-Wan, as if he thinks Obi-Wan could use some distance on the ride up. Obi-Wan doesn’t, though he also makes no move to step any nearer, either.

Glancing down, he can see that Qui-Gon’s hand hangs at his side and Obi-Wan has the strongest urge to hook their little fingers together, to forge that smallest link between them again, but instead he keeps his hands resolutely in his pockets, balling them into fists for good measure.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Lilibet and antheiasilva for the enthusiasm and the extra set of eyes!
> 
> Thanks Pomiar for the encouragement! (and sorry, I wanted to post it all at once but I have zero chill, apparently.)


End file.
